Page 26 - Poems

merdes mentales. Puis : Non, il est à Londres
cette semaine. Oui, j’avais tellement peur qu’elle
soit au match France-Allemagne. Le Petit
Cambodge, c’est à 50 m de leur appart, je vais
les appeler. Allez, essaie de dormir quand-même.

After that, after the first careering hours of unknowing, of querying, of replying, of breath mislaid
then returned, of panic and short reprieve (with night less immense, if still igneous), after all that
do I run into you, into your note, an almost-eidolon, on Facebook. That is where I remember
you, that is when I remember you, in a dark flash flood of guilt and terror dammed solely by
relief. Yes, that’s how I remember you, with disbelief at the ease with which knees and ears,
pulse, liver and ligaments cease to count when the muscles and walls, the arteries and veins
of the heart, the ones that own and shape its contours, may be in peril. You are alive, you
are safe, you tell us in crisp, clean prose, but wholly by miracle, or whichever the earthly
equivalent that made sense. You tell of the hours, the miles traversed after we’d parted
ways at Rue du Renard, after you strolled eastwards and I headed north for Stalingrad.
There you were, sated with crêpes and cider and content, ambling along the sapphire
& silicon of that gloaming, propelled by your playlist all the way to Charonne, fond
eyes grazing the usual pageant of streetside Paris. Terrasse-junkies sipping clement
autumn skies. The chef – immaculate in whites – busy on a phone at the doorway
to his Japanese joint. A lagoon of quiet pavement. The Kebab counter you’d just
left behind. The slow halt of a car – grey or blue or black? – to your left, around
two metres away. A loud volley (sparklers, crackers, teens fooling around, you’d
imagined) which sliced the music in your headphones. You speak of swivelling
to see men – two or three, you couldn’t swear – emerge from two sides of that
car attired in casual, dark purpose, Kalashnikovs at their hips, rifles that they’d
“deployed with incredible resolve and calm”. Of the rifles they fired then, 90°
from you, belching relentless bullets like so much confetti at vehicles, diners,
vitrines, pedestrians. Of faces, limbs, torsos, tongues, minds petrified before
you: fear hadn’t yet seeped into capillaries of thought. Of the sheer absence
of noise, all noise but the fusillade from forged steel and plywood and pure
hate. Of Time, too, who turned into ice or stone in consternation. Of feet,
your dancer’s feet, that darted to life, spun the opposite way, and ran you
off, ran you – cramped thighs, frozen neurons, dry mouth and all – away
from there intoning you are still alive, you are still alive at each step until you
tumbled into safety. Of time, once more, the time – two or four or five
seconds – that rose quick and high, rose to snatch you from the sward
of mangled breath and wall, shattered flesh and glass about to befall
La Belle Équipe. None there, you are to learn gradually (the next
morning and the next and the next: death will be a slow, steady
assault to the heart), on the patch of asphalt facing the first
sleet-storm of lead, survived on that fateful day. Nineteen
dead, nine severely wounded, many more left with horror
bludgeoned into brain and marrow. “The most shocking
part was the calm, the accuracy of their actions.” You’ll

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